<ul><li>We can write everything we feel down on paper. </li><li>We can, without too much effort, order a bowl of French fries.</li><li>Others forget the stupid things we’ve done faster than we do. </li><li>Sincere apologies tend to be gladly accepted. </li><li>We can reinvent ourselves – a bit. </li><li>Parents keep on loving us even if we largely ignore them for a few years. </li><li>Children continue to love us even if they say they don’t; and even if we were not always perfect parents. </li><li>By the time we are forty, nothing we did or thought at the age of twenty will seem very important.</li></ul>

cont.

<ul><li>No-one can stop us having our own thoughts. </li><li>We can with complete impunity fantasise about the people we can’t have.</li><li>We can get to hear the jokes and stories of the funniest people on the planet. </li><li>In the middle of the night, and in the early morning, we have the world to ourselves. </li><li>It isn’t what happened to us that counts; but how we choose to tell the story. </li><li>We do not know what will happen in the future.</li></ul>

<ul><li>There’s always music. </li><li>Without asking anyone, we could go into many shops and buy a treat. </li><li>There’s always someone suffering just in the way we are. </li><li>Everyone is weird, we just don’t have access to their inner minds. </li><li>The silent majesty of a clear night sky. </li><li>We’re very normal in the number of idiocies we’ve committed. </li><li>We don’t have to take ourselves seriously. </li><li>We can feel heroic about the ordinary. </li><li>We can smile even on little things we enjoy.</li><li>We have managed to learn a few things down the years. </li></ul>

<ul><li>There are lots of beautiful people we can take pleasure in looking at. </li><li>There are people who have loved us, even though we didn’t totally deserve their affection or devotion. </li><li>A few bits of our body are really rather beautiful.</li><li>Things really do look better when we have slept. </li><li>Many of the world’s most interesting people have written down their thoughts and ideas. </li><li>Other people are usually shyer, sweeter and kinder than we’d anticipated. </li><li>We’ve perhaps found one good friend or a special someone.</li></ul>

<ul><li>Most of the 78 organs in our bodies have performed pretty reliably since the day we were born.</li><li>Everyone messes up their life quite a bit. </li><li>We’ve sometimes been surprised by how things turned out. </li><li>We don’t need to be afraid of starving – or even of being very cold. </li><li>Every year, if we just stay in one spot, there are at least two weeks of perfect weather.</li><li>We are never too far from a very hot bath. </li><li>We’ve come a long way since the early shyness, incompetence and fear. </li><li>Of course we couldn’t have known. </li><li>Compared with what we feared in the rockiest patches, this is almost OK.</li></ul>

A Few Things Still to Be Grateful For 🙏

<ul><li>We’re still here. </li><li>There were no outright catastrophes today. </li><li>A few times, we really experienced what love felt like. </li><li>A few times, we really felt understood. </li><li>Many of the people we love are still alive. </li><li>We could disappear for a bit. </li><li>We still have quite a lot of time left. </li><li>Children of three or four are, intermittently, reliably sweet. </li><li>There hasn’t been a war here for a while. </li><li>You can turn on the tap and clean water comes out for almost nothing. </li><li>We can leave the places we were born and raised.</li></ul>

cont.

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